50 Psychology Classics

Mind

• Feelings are not facts; you can change your feelings by changing your thinking.
• The majority of negative thoughts that cause us emotional turmoil are plain wrong or at least distortions of the truth, but we accept them without question.
• If we know how we generate negative emotions through particular thoughts, especially irrational ones, we have the secret to never being desperately unhappy again.
• Trust your intuition, rather than technology, to protect you from violence.
• What we think we lack determines what we will become in life.
• A dream can seem like the opposite of what we wish for, because we may be defensive about or want to cover up many of our wishes, so the only way a dream can make an issue known is by raising it in its opposite sense.
• Dreams were therefore much more than idle nighttime entertainments—in revealing our unconscious motivations they were a key to understanding human nature.
• Unconscious mind, which if accessed in a trance state can solve any problem and return us to our true, powerful self.
• “A problem well defined is a problem half solved.”
• Learning how to think more effectively is not difficult and can dramatically improve our ingenuity in solving problems.
• To get win–win outcomes, we have to focus not on the solution but on each party’s needs.
• When one aspect of us achieves wholeness, there is still some larger self that is trying to make sense of our experience.

Society

• People play games as a substitute for real intimacy, and every game, however unpleasant, has a particular payoff for one or both players.
• If we play too many “bad” games for too long, they become selfdestructive. The more games we play, the more we expect others to play them too;
• Although interpersonal communication is humanity’s greatest accomplishment, the average person does not communicate well. Low-level  communication leads to loneliness and distance from friends, lovers, spouses, and children—as well as ineffectiveness at work.
• Good people skills not only get you what you want, they bring out the best in your relationships.
• If we become more conscious of our ingrained reactions and behavior patterns, our life can begin to be genuinely free.
• Self-esteem occurs naturally when we choose to live according to reason and our own principles.
• If you know a person’s personality type their behavior begins to make sense.
• Know the techniques of psychological influence to avoid becoming their victim.
• All personalities can be measured according to two or three basic biologically determined dimensions.
• What seem like very personal changes are often simply transitions from one season of life to another.
• The conscious acceptance of suffering or fate can be transformed into one of our greatest achievements.
• Not forgiving doesn’t really punish the perpetrator, whereas forgiving can transform ourselves and bring back our life satisfaction.

Role models

• If you’re willing to invest a little time in yourself, you can learn to master your moods more effectively, just as an athlete who participates in a daily conditioning program can develop greater endurance and strength.
• Exercise is the best mood regulator. A brisk walk of 5–15 minutes when we are feeling tired paradoxically restores our spirits and can energize us for up to two hours.
• The people we most admire are smart in certain ways, they have refined their way of thinking and doing to an unusual extent.
• Directed or intelligent thought, which has an aim, adapts that aim to reality, and can communicate it in language. This thinking is based on experience and logic.
• In the vast majority of fields, what makes a star performer is the ability to deploy exceptional emotional intelligence.
• Real creativity can only emerge once we have mastered the medium or domain in which we work.

Relationships

• The very happy people spend the least time alone and the most time socializing, and they are rated highest on good relationships by themselves and also by their friends.
• Be alive every minute in your physical world. Listen to your body; don’t live in abstractions.
• A more powerful and often more damaging defense is repression, because it requires the most energy to keep it in place.
• Healthy people engage with life: “eating and food-getting, loving and making love, aggressing, conflicting, communicating, perceiving, learning,” and so on.
• The three pillars of respect that really produce good relationships: empathy, nonpossessive love, and genuineness.
• Boys gain self-esteem through independence from others, while females gain it through the closeness of their social bonds.
• While some couples believe that romantic dinners or holidays can make a marriage happy, in fact it is the little daily attentions given to the other person (turning toward) that count. Better, longerlasting marriages are those in which the power is shared.
• Women crave emotional intimacy, interdependence, and verbal affirmation in their daily life with their partner, while men assume that financial security and a good sex life form the basis of a successful marriage.
• Warm physical bonds in infancy are vital to our becoming healthy adults.
• Children are not simply little adults, thinking less efficiently— they think differently.
• A genuine relationship or interaction is one in which you are comfortable to be yourself, and in which the other person clearly sees your potential.

Happiness

• Awareness of life as a series of choices—one way advances us toward personal growth, the other involves a regression.
• Paradoxically, happiness may lie in limiting our choices rather than increasing them.
• We think we want choice, but when we actually have it, it becomes less attractive—too much choice actually causes us distress.
• The recipe for happiness is simple and twofold: 1) make your decisions irreversible; and 2) constantly appreciate the life you do have.
• Happiness has little to do with pleasure, and much to do with developing personal strengths and character.

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